


The Last of Him

by Twisted_Taffy



Series: Copied [11]
Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Clones, Hurt Xephos, Ridge is magic, Xephos is insane, Yoglabs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 01:36:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11117151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twisted_Taffy/pseuds/Twisted_Taffy
Summary: There was friendship. There was insanity. And then there was darkness.





	The Last of Him

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: We don't own the Yogscast or any of these characters.

The white metal walls rang hauntingly with each step they took deeper into the steel monstrosity. Evil seeped from the overwhelming silence of a place that had gone far too long without sound. There was still noise, the never-ending hum of machinery hidden behind the stark walls, but all the sounds that came with people and creatures, with life, were simply nonexistent. It only served to increase the pressure on the shoulders of the invading scientist and demigod, who both wished more than anything that they did not have to enter this unholy space. Following the color-coded stripes the two forced themselves to move further into the foreboding place.

¤          ¤          ¤

            Tap. Tap. Tap.

            A long, pale finger reached out to tap the frosted glass, its fingernail leaving scratch mark lines in the frozen fractals. A blue glow harshly illuminated the face half-obscured in the translucent glass. In the master clone storage room of Yoglabs, Xephos stared at Honeydew.

            “Why did I ever think I needed you?” he calmly asked the frozen body. “Even when I was behind you I was still ahead. I always planned, questioned, _thought._ You charged bullheadedly in and blew things up in your usual primitive way. How did anything ever get done? Nothing ever quite went right with you around. Thankfully I was always miles ahead, always capable of running back and giving you new things to destroy. Everything I had was ready for upgrades anyway I suppose.”

            Long fingers curled into a fist, thudding against the glass. A forehead copies the motion with a second impact.

            “The thing is… I can’t blame you for it. I’ve wanted to, oh how I’ve wanted to. But I’ve never found a way to blame you. I’m so far ahead of you, how could I ever expect you to keep up? After all, dwarves have only got little legs.”

            “Easy. You sit your ass down and wait.”

            Xephos turned slowly, his features donning a wide grin and his arms spreading welcomingly.

            “Lalna you cheeky bugger. How’d you find your way in here? Ah, Ridge, you bastard. You’re not supposed to help him. That’s cheating!”

            “Xeph’ stop! You really want this?! This place, this room, that _thing_ ‘Dew’s in?! This is everything you and ‘Dew swore to stop!”

            Xephos chuckled at Lalna’s desperate words, “That? Oh, don’t mind that.”

            “YOU HAVE YOUR BEST FRIEND FROZEN IN A BOX! LIKE A BLOODY POPSICLE!”

            “Look, it’s _fine_. Haven’t you got something better to do than stand here and yell at me?”

            Lalna looked enraged and ready to continue screaming for some time but Ridge’s smooth voice cut through first.

            “Xephos. We have come to take Honeydew from here and return you to your original state. This is not who you are.”

            The spaceman smirked, shifting so he stood protectively before Honeydew’s cloning cell.

            “Good luck with that. This bio lock on the door? Bound to me. I lose consciousness or have my power’s stripped, that lock seals with no chance of getting him out in one piece. Not to mention the usual password inscription of course.”

            Lalna lunged for the main control panel, desperation clouding his thoughts, but Xephos launched himself across the room quicker than the scientist could easily follow. A vice-like grip wrapped around his wrist, twisting and pushing.

            “Now now _friend._ You’re not supposed to touch that.”

            Inevitable gasps of pain escaped the lab-coated man as the spaceman leaned harder on his wrist. Several crackles and pops came from the tortured limb before the pressure was forcefully removed by a fancy coat and thrown across the room.

            Ridge rushed words at Lalna, watching Xephos slowly pick himself up from the crushed remains of a computer.

            “Lalna, release the dwarf from his containment as fast as you can. I will keep him at bay until you do so, and then I will drain him of his power.”

            The scientist hurried to begin his task and Ridge turned to face the growling spaceman spitting words at him.

            “So that’s how you want to do it eh? Let’s play.”

            The blue glow from Xephos’ eyes grew brighter, running over his eyes to form solid, shining sapphire pools. Sparks of icy blue magic melded together to create tangible trails of magic flowing from his body, which rose in the air as sheer power pushed against the futile efforts of gravity. Ridge rose to match him, eyes metamorphosing into miniature suns even as he was already moving to attack.

            As fast as Xephos had been, Ridge had known power for far longer, and knew how to be faster. The demigod flipped behind the spaceman, grabbing his limbs and holding them still with his own. Streaming trails of gold maneuvered their way around blue, pinning them similar to Xephos’ arms and legs. Heavy resistance was made, but thrashing and flailing ceased quickly as the spaceman learned movement was minimal and fighting momentarily futile.

            “Give up, spaceman. You should never have gained this power; it is something that men can never hope to control. You and I were never meant to be equals.”

            Xephos laughed, a chilling sound as icy as the light flooding from his eyes.

            “Ridge, we’re not so different now though, are we?”

            Ridge growled, tightening his grip on the spaceman and weaving his magic tighter around the sapphire trails of Xephos. “You have gone much further than I ever have spaceman.”

            “Have I though, have I really? You do as you please, helping and hindering depending on your constantly fluctuating mood. You toy with our lives, forcing us to take other’s in the arenas we are unwilling placed in. You’ve spent decades, centuries, millennia probably, twisting and turning our world, watching us fruitlessly struggle against your power. And now, now that I can see from where you’re standing, I can see why. Balls to the world! I like it!”

            Xephos’ manic grin stretched wider, an insane grin Ridge realized was familiar. He’d seen it often, back before the humans and dwarves, the mages and forest sprites, the spaceman came; seen it in polished obsidian and diamond, in the shards of glass littering flaming villages. The crackle of bones bent too far past their limit and the slicing of flesh separating from stiff cartilage rang in Ridge’s ears, calling for his hands to make them reality, but he shook them from his thoughts. He could not do those things now; it was no longer a part of who he was making himself be.

            Ridge was aware now of the meaning of the word restraint, of the idea of help and being good. Xephos had always been the best at those ideas, but now he had lost them—they had been banished from his being. Now Ridge was the one who had to push these things upon Xephos. He would clear the other’s mind, let his eyes see what he was doing and take away the magic forcing his hands. He would fix him, make him right. He would drain Xephos of magic, of power and strength, until all that remained was mortality.

            “Ridge! We’re good! Hell yeah, I’m awesome!” Lalna’s enthusiastic cheer came accompanied by the hissing release of a cloning cell door and the thud of the body inside reacquainting itself with the floor outside. Reassured that the dwarf was safe Ridge turned his focus solely on his magic and that of the man struggling in his grasp.

            Pulses that quickly gained frequency and intensity rippled through gold and into sapphire, where spikes of power shot jaggedly back to a body contorting as if it were being filled with electricity and not magic. Shimmering trails struggled to keep ahold of icy ones bucking and shaking in frustration and pain. In their fight they slammed into everything, crushing machinery, bending and breaking tubes, leaving substantial dents in walls and the door. Metal screamed under the pressure whacked against it.

            With each blast the two were sent closer to the ground, the spaceman’s shrinking magic rebelling less and less, until Ridge stood holding up Xephos’ slackened form, preparing to deliver the final, physical blow to send him to a dark sleep.

            “Ridge, wait.” Lalna’s uninjured hand rushed out to grab ahold of Ridge’s wrist, pausing it midswing. The demigod watched every movement of the scientist as he knelt stiffly, and strengthened his grip on the almost-unconscious Xephos as Lalna reached out to lift the spaceman’s head. Xephos’ eyes still bled a blue glow, but beneath the color they were lucid. Cracked words came from a bloody mouth.

            “Fix him Lalna, _please_. If nothing else, make him ‘Dew again.”

            Lalna’s throat closed at the plea, and he swallowed thickly. Xephos’ head had fallen and his eyes shut, but Lalna nodded anyway. His response came strained with pain and grief.

            “I promise Xeph. I’m gonna fix him, and I’m gonna fix you, and then we can leave this all behind.”

            Lalna flinched back as Ridge’s fist flew past and impacted Xephos’ skull with a soft thud, ensuring his unconsciousness. The demigod lowered the now limp body to the floor and wasted no time in beginning his work. Lalna retreated to the still unresponsive Honeydew’s side but found he could not drag his gaze from the ongoing battle of magic playing out before him. Ridge’s hands danced above Xephos, releasing a glimmering strand that poked the spaceman’s chest firmly before retracting, dragging a separate strand of magic with it. Sharp, icy blue battled against the steady pull of the warm gold, twisting and writhing in its efforts to escape. Beads of sweat ran down a face molded in concentration, so out of place on a being who never seemed to show work or effort or anything beyond perfect ease.

            “Lalna, hold him down.”

            The scientist came when he was called, hesitant but determined, and draped himself across tense limbs that seemed to press further into the floor beneath them. Up close he watched as sparks flew from glittering streaks of color as they wavered around each other, and as the sapphire flickered and waned under the other’s strength until only a sickly thin stream remained. Ridge paused just before the last was removed, and glanced for the first time over at Lalna.

            “Hold tight and don’t let him move.”

            Without giving time for thought, the demigod yanked viciously on the last of the blue, eliciting screams from the pinned man as his limbs spasmed violently against the weight on top of them. But those same limbs froze, rigid as the steel beneath them, as golden magic grasped the sapphire and snapped it. A high keening sound echoed then from lips that only a short time ago had been hissing silver-tongued words of hatred, and so long ago offered soft words of comfort and friendship.

            The severed end of sapphire squirmed slightly before sinking and slipping back into a chest now barely pulsing with short, shallow breaths. A weak, thready pulse quietly made itself known to science-stained fingers rushing to feel its beat. A deep sigh became the new sound bouncing around the room as Ridge stood slowly, a lace adorned brushing away salt-water droplets. He gazed down at the paling spaceman, the scientist sitting beside him, and the half-propped up dwarf beyond them. Sighing again, he knelt beside Lalna.

            “It will be long and difficult, but he will recover. They will both recover. I have taken his magic; it can no longer control him.”

            Lalna glanced up at him, confused. “But not all of it. There’s still magic in him. I’ve done enough experimenting with magic to know there’s a possibility for it to come back.”

            “His magic is tied to his life-force; I cannot take all of it without taking his life as well. There will always be a chance for it to overrun him again, but it can never be this strong, and it will be a long time before that chance arrives.”

            “What about ‘Dew?”

            Ridge shifted his eyes to glance momentarily at the stirring dwarf in question. “The dwarf will recover fully. Although no doubt there will be questions to be answered, he will be back to his usual self in a matter of hours.”

            “What will happen to this place? This holds and controls all of the master clones, if it stops then respawning stops and then the world’s fission…”

            “I will take care of it. Yoglabs will become self-sustained and completely harmless.” Ridge interrupted smoothly.

            “Oh, right. Ok, cool. Got it.” Lalna carefully arranged the long limbs of Xephos’ limp form in his arms, minding his probably broken wrist, and made his way over to collect the half-awake, somewhat disoriented, and very much confused Honeydew. The dwarf was shoved unceremoniously towards the dented doors with a rushed ‘I’ll explain later’, closely followed by the scientist with the spaceman nestled child-like in his arms. Just before passing through the color-coded doorway Lalna paused, not turning around.

            “What do we do now?”

            The words were soft, barely distinguishable in the once-imposing room, but the response came cold and clear.

            “Leave. And do not let him come back.”

            Lalna shifted slightly as he watched Honeydew continue to meander his way down the outside hallway, enough for a pale face framed by dark, sweat-slicked hair and a red jacket to roll into view and grasp Ridge’s sight.

            “Does he know what he’s done?”

            “Not consciously, the block on his magic prevents that as well. However, I doubt his subconscious will let him forget the evils he has done. His dreams will not be pleasant ones.”

 

 

 

            “Will he remember?”

 

 

 

            “Yes.”


End file.
